Track 88
by Black Goddess
Summary: Taito fluff SLASH! Matt and Tai have a fight, can the other Digidestined help them make it up


Disclaimer: Digimon is NOT mine! The CD Matt listens to is Antichrist superstar by Marilyn Manson (which isn't mine either) No lyrics are included! The title comes from the CD, which has 99 tracks, sixteen of which are songs (1-16), one of which (track 99) is sort of voices, the rest of which (including Track 88) are nothing. As this is Taito fluff, I thought it'd be a good joke (I am a strange person!)  
  
Track 88  
By the Black Goddess  
  
Matt Ishida tore home in a fit of rage. He couldn't believe what Tai had just said to him. How dare that stupid, goggle-wearing footballer accuse HIM of being selfish? He slammed the front door behind him and raced up to his room, quickly shoving a CD in the player and cranking it up to full volume. Matt was angry, and he wanted everyone to know it. As the chant of "We hate love." began to emerge from the speakers, he threw himself onto his bed and stared at the ceiling, too full of rage to even join in.  
  
It had all started that lunchtime.   
"Come on Matt! You gotta come and watch the game!" Tai told him.  
"I don't like football" Matt reminded him. "I don't even understand it, so why would I want to spend 90 minutes freezing my ass off while boys in different coloured tops kick a ball randomly around a field?"  
"Because it's the finals" Tai said, as if that explained everything.  
"So?" said Matt, beginning to get irritated with his boyfriend's persistence.  
"We've never got to the finals before! Come on Matt, I want all my friends to be there, but you especially. It means a lot to me."   
"But Tai, I've got band practice tomorrow. If I come to the game, I'll miss it, and we've got a gig in two days. We really need to practice. I missed the last one because you wanted me to come on a Digidestined camping trip - I can't miss this one as well"  
"I won't ask you to miss any more, just this one. Please Matt, this might be the only time we get to the finals and I want you to see me score the winning goal! I always come to your gigs."  
"Like that's such a sacrifice - an evening of dancing and fun! I appreciate your sacrifices" said Matt sarcastically, "but I've told you - I can't make it."  
"Can't you be late for practice, or reschedule it or something?"  
"Tai, we're practising every spare moment we have in the next two days already. There's no way I can reschedule it. And your match runs straight through my practice. You're just going to have to accept that I can't make it this time."  
"But you never come to my games! I know that having you there will bring me luck, and we really need it."  
"Tai, I'm sorry, but I can't" said Matt, as patiently as he could manage.  
"Fine then!" snapped Tai. The bell rang for afternoon school at that point and the two walked in. Tai was in a bad mood all afternoon, but when school ended, he made one last try to convince Matt to come to the game.  
"Please Matt?" he begged, giving his boyfriend a pleading look out of his deep brown eyes. "I really would appreciate you being there."  
Matt knew he should tell a lie and say he'd do his best to make it, but somehow he couldn't. Not only did he not want to make promises to Tai he had no intention of keeping, he had reached the end of his tether with Tai's pestering.  
"I've told you, I can't make it." he snapped. "Now stop pestering me!"  
Tai looked as if Matt had punched him. Then:  
"I think you're just selfish Ishida Yamato!" he shouted. "I ask you to do one thing for me, just one thing, and you refuse! I want you to give up 90 minutes of your life to watch me win the football finals, and you just can't be bothered! Well if that's the way you want things to be, then fine!" Tai spun around and began to walk off. Matt grabbed his arm and spun him roughly back to face him.  
"How dare you call me selfish?" he yelled. "I've told you exactly why I can't make it, but you just won't listen! You think the whole world revolves around you, and you can't accept the fact that this time, I'm not going to do as you say! I'm sick of you bossing me around Tai. I'm not coming to your game, and I don't care if I never see you again!"   
With that, Matt turned and ran, shoulder-barging through the heavy doors and running for home as if his life depended on reaching there immediately.  
  
He lay limply on the bed. Even the music coming from the CD player couldn't make him feel better. He was running over his fight with Tai in his head, trying to work out why things had got so out of control. His anger with Tai was still strong, but the realisation of what he had said to him was only just beginning to sink in.  
"He deserved it!" he thought suddenly in a last fit of temper. "Everything I said to him was true, and I don't care if I never see him again." With that he switched the track on the CD to number thirteen and began to yell along to 1996.  
He continued to join in until the end of the music, when he flopped back onto his bed to listen to the silence. He was definitely beginning to regret what he'd said to Tai now, but there was no way he'd apologise, or go to the game. He lay there irritably trying to think of something to do until the garbled voices on track 99 informed him in disjointed sentences that they had come to save him and that when he suffered he knew that had been betrayed. The hissing of the CD player stopped and Matt rolled off his bed with a sigh. He changed into a pair of black jeans and a T-shirt he'd never yet dared to wear outside his own house before walking down the stairs to the kitchen. He turned on a lamp in the corner, casting shadows over the room before he began to make a meal for himself. He ate it in the dark before sulking back up to his room where he fell into a disturbed sleep.  
Matt didn't enjoy the rest of his weekend. He got all the right notes at the band practices, but somehow the music didn't cheer him up the way it usually did. When he wasn't at band, he moped around the house. To add insult to injury, TK phoned on Sunday to ask why he hadn't been at Tai's game.  
"Tai was miserable without you" his younger brother informed him.  
"If you tell me the result I'm hanging up. I mean it TK!" said Matt. A small part of him thought 'good!' upon hearing of Tai's distress.  
"So, tell me something else." he said. "How are the others?"  
"Kari says Tai's been moping" said TK immediately. "She says..."  
"I don't want to hear about Tai!" snapped Matt. "Someone else, OK?" Hurt silence emanated from the telephone. "I'm sorry TK. I didn't mean to shout, I'm just fed up to the back teeth with Taichi Yagami."  
"What did you two fight about anyway?" asked TK curiously.  
"He was trying to force me to go to his stupid game, and when I said I was busy, he said I was selfish!" said Matt indignantly. "I've got a gig tomorrow, and believe me we needed the practice! But you know Tai, the second anyone doesn't do what he says, he gets into a massive huff and refuses to listen to reason."  
"So what did you say?" asked TK eagerly.  
"It doesn't matter." said Matt, not wanting to share the sordid details with his younger brother. "Can we stop talking about this now?"  
"I'm sorry" said TK. He began to talk about other things, things which Matt barely heard, so preoccupied was he with his own thoughts. When TK hung up, Matt went back upstairs. He was dreading school the next day and having to face Tai again.  
"He sounded really mad" TK told Kari after he finished talking to Matt. "He said he was fed up with Tai, and that Tai called him selfish"  
"Did he sound like he might want to make up?" asked Kari hopefully.  
"It sounded like he was still angry. Did Tai really call him selfish?" "He certainly told me Matt was selfish .Tai said that Matt told him he was sick of Tai bossing him around and he never wanted to see Tai again."  
"Matt said that?"   
"That's what Tai told me. At least, I think that's what he said. He was crying in the bathroom, so I might have misheard."  
"Tai cried?"   
"Yes."  
There was a pause for a moment while Kari remembered the terrible state her brother had been in and TK tried to imagine the cheerful Digidestined leader in tears.  
"Do you think Matt meant it?" asked TK after a while.  
"You're his brother! Do you think he meant it?"  
"He can't have done. He and Tai have been friends for ages - surely they wouldn't fall out over something like this for long." Kari agreed, but secretly she wasn't so sure. She knew that Tai and Matt had a deeper kind of relationship than TK seemed to realise and that although this would be a little squabble between friends, it was a more serious commitment issue for a couple. She didn't like to think what would happen to the Digidestined group if they didn't make it up.  
  
The following days were hard for both Tai and Matt. Matt had strolled late into registration and taken a seat at the back of the class with one of the guys from his band, noting as he did so that Tai was also no longer sitting in his usual seat. This pattern continued for the rest of the day, with the pair avoiding each other in the corridors. The one time Matt did accidentally catch Tai's eye, the look in the other boy's eyes cut Matt to the core. That night Matt cried for the first time over the break-up. He was sure that Tai could never forgive him for what he had said, and he was also sure that Tai would never apologise to him for saying the things he had done. Tai did not come to Matt's gig, though Kari, TK and Sora turned up as always. They were just as nice to Matt as always, but they weren't Tai. He was sure that they were blaming him for the argument with Tai and the thought just made him feel worse.  
As the week dragged on, both boys grew steadily more miserable. Matt started spending all of his free time in the music rooms playing his guitar, and Tai spent all his time playing football. The schoolwork of both suffered.  
"What are we going to do?" TK asked Kari on Friday evening. It had now been a week since Matt and Tai's big fight and the fact that both boys were miserable was obvious to even TK, who didn't live with either of them. To Kari, her brother's distress was almost palpable.  
"We've got to get them back together" said Kari thoughtfully. "They're both so miserable. Tai's moping all the time, and Sora told me that whenever she sees Matt in school he's just as bad."  
"But how?" asked TK practically. "We've got to do something. I could try and talk to Matt again, tell him I'm sure Tai wants to make up."  
"The problem is that neither of them wants to apologise" said Kari, who had now obtained a fairly accurate idea of the things that had been said. "They both said some nasty things, but neither of them thinks that they should be the one apologising. Tai told me he would get back with Matt if he'd apologise to him, or even hint that he was sorry, but he says Matt completely ignores him"  
"I'll talk to Matt." decided TK. "We should try the obvious things first"  
"I'll start thinking of a backup plan" said Kari gloomily.  
"Thanks for your confidence!" said TK in a half amused, half hurt voice.   
"I just think it might be a little harder than that. Try your best!" she said, grinning at him. "I'll talk to Tai."  
TK frowned to himself as he walked home. Something about the conversation he'd just had with Kari was bothering him. He tried to remember the conversation as well as he could, but he couldn't see why it had bothered him. The feeling that he was missing something was quite strong. Shrugging he dismissed it. It would either come back or it wouldn't. He took his mind off it by trying to work out what he would say to Matt.  
  
"Oh hi TK. Come on in." Matt opened the door to let his younger brother in, wincing at the bright sunlight that shone in the hall.  
"Hi Matt. How are you?"  
Matt showed his brother into the main room and collapsed on the couch.  
"I feel terrible!" he groaned.  
"You went out with the band last night didn't you?" said TK in a wryly amused tone, mentally groaning. He had to say this now, but Matt probably wouldn't focus on a word he said thanks to the hangover his brother was obviously suffering from.  
"Yeah" said Matt. He flashed his brother a tired smile, then leaned back and closed his eyes.  
"Did you meet anyone nice?"  
"Stop fishing little brother" said Matt, not warningly but amused.  
"I bet none of your band are as good friends to you as Tai is." said TK bluntly. Matt's eyes snapped open.  
"What do you mean by that?" he asked, his bloodshot blue eyes fixed on his brother's face.  
"You and Tai have been friends for years. You've been in the Digital World together. Your friendship is too strong to throw away over some silly squabble. Please talk to him!"  
Matt shut his eyes again and said nothing. TK was just opening his mouth to go on when Matt spoke.  
"This isn't just 'some silly squabble' TK." he said softly. "This is an important issue between us."  
"What, the fact that you wouldn't come to his game is going to wreck a good friendship?"  
"It's not a friendship," said Matt flatly.  
"Matt! You and Tai are so close, you're miserable without him! You can't hate him that much."  
"I meant that we're lovers," said Matt softly. "And I'm sick of Tai bossing me about. There has to be give and take in all relationships, between friends as well as lovers, but between lovers it's most important. Tai keeps telling me what to do, trying to force me to do things. Until he backs off and lets me makes my own choices we can't be together. Do you see?"  
TK stared at his brother in shock. Suddenly Kari's words came back to him 'We need to get them back together' So that was what had been bothering him! Tears had begun to seep out of Matt's eyes. TK dived over and wrapped his arms around his brother.  
"Oh Matt," he said softly. "Why didn't you tell me?"  
"I don't know. I just sort of assumed you knew. Our relationship just seem to move naturally from rough-and-tumble play to kissing and groping without any effort from either of us. There wasn't really a day where we decided to start going out, and it seemed weird to just say 'Oh yes, Tai and I are screwing.' I think Tai told Kari, and some of the others have guessed."  
"You should have said something when you fell out though. I didn't understand why it was such a big deal."  
"He always tries to persuade me to do things. I knew the match was important, but so was my practice, and I'd just missed one because he wanted me to go camping. I couldn't miss that one too! I told him how it was, but he just kept pestering until I told him to stop. Then he called me selfish!" Matt began to cry properly and buried his face into TK's shoulder. TK hugged him tight, tracing little circles on his brother's back.  
"Won't you speak to him?" he asked softly. "You're miserable Matt. I know Tai's miserable too. When he answered the door, he looked at me like I was a miracle, then blinked and told me Kari was in the bedroom before slouching off to his own room. He thought I was you Matt, and he was so pleased. Can't you try and work it out?"  
"He should be the one saying he's sorry" said Matt obstinately.  
"But Matt, is it worth throwing your whole relationship with Tai away because both of you are too proud to admit you might have made a mistake?"   
Matt nodded. "I'll think about it TK" he said in a 'let's not discuss this any more' tone of voice. But TK had seen his brother's jaw clench slightly. The stubborn glint was in his eye, and TK suspected that his words had done absolutely no good at all.  
  
A similar scene was unfolding over at the Yagami household. Tai admitted to being miserable, but said that Matt never wanted to see him again, and he wasn't going to make a fool of himself by going begging to him, and that Matt should apologise for calling him bossy.  
"Tai, Matt probably only said those things because he was angry!" said Kari, exasperation tingeing her voice slightly. "He wants to make up, I know he does. Please Tai, you have to talk to him and sort this out."  
"I'll talk to him if he apologises, not before." said Tai bluntly, then refused to say another word.  
  
"They're both so stubborn!" said TK in frustration. He and Kari had arrived at the computer lab before the others and were taking advantage of the alone time to discuss the situation with their older brothers.   
"Both of them are unhappy, but neither of them will make the first move" agreed Kari. "I can't think of anything else to do. Maybe one of them will come around."  
"Or maybe one of them will meet someone else! This could tear the Digidestined apart!"   
"What could?" asked Davis curiously, entering the lab in time to hear the end of TK's sentence."  
Kari and TK shot each other looks.   
"Matt and Tai have had a big fight and now they aren't speaking." said TK.  
"But that's terrible! Those two are the heart of the Digidestined! What'll we do if they never speak again?"  
"I've no idea" said Kari shortly. "I don't think we should discuss it" At that point, Yolei and Iori burst in, both flushed and out of breath.  
"Sorry we're late."  
"No problem" said Kari. "Shall we go?"  
"Digiport open!" yelled Davis.  
  
The next day was Saturday. On the way to football practice, Davis kept thinking about Tai. He knew he'd see Tai that day, the older kids trained after them, but he'd be able to catch him in the changing rooms before Tai went out to play. Maybe he could talk some sense into him! Much reassured by having decided on a plan of action, Davis happily made his way to training.  
Tai didn't go to practise with so much enthusiasm. Since the fight with Matt, he wasn't very interested in doing anything, and especially not football.  
'If I hadn't made such a fuss about the stupid game, Matt and I would still be together." he thought gloomily, ignoring the greetings of his training mates and sitting down to lace his boots. Suddenly he became aware that someone was standing in front of him.  
"Oh hello Davis" he said wearily, looking up and realising who it was. "What's up?"  
"You!" retorted the younger Digidestined. "You look really miserable!"  
"Matt and I had a fight" said Tai, finishing one boot and starting to lace the next.  
"Well, why don't you talk to him about it? Whatever you fought about is really bothering you. You've got your shirt on back-to-front." Tai looked down at himself and swore. It was true. He hastily took his arms out and began to turn it around.  
"He said he never wanted to see me again" said Tai.  
"And you believed him? Jeez, how dumb are you? Jun says that to me all the time, but I know she doesn't mean it. Matt was probably just mad. I bet he's sorry now. If you go talk to him, everything'll be fine."  
"It's not as easy as that Davis." said Tai, fixing his shirt and finishing the other boot.  
"Sure it is! You two have to make this up! What'll happen to the Digidestined if you two fall out?"  
"Nothing." Tai stood up, straightening his shirt properly and preparing to head out onto the pitch.  
"Don't be such an idiot!" yelled Davis. "Maybe you need these goggles back, perhaps you wore them so long that when you gave them to me you gave me your brain! If you and Matt fall out, the Digidestined group is ruined! I bet Matt's really sorry now, but you're just too dumb to see that!" Tai stared at Davis, stunned. The younger Digidestined had never spoken to him like this before. "Anyway, I'm going. My time's too important to waste talking to people who're too dumb to know when they had a good thing!" With that, Davis turned and marched out of the changing rooms, leaving Tai staring after him. The effect of Davis's dramatic exit was slightly lessened however when he slunk back in to collect his kitbag.  
  
Tai played badly at training. His mind was too occupied by what Davis had said to concentrate on the game.  
"What the hell is wrong with you?" yelled one of his team-mates. "Stop messing around and play properly!"  
"I don't feel too good" said Tai. "I think I'd better go."  
"Yeah, go home and get some rest, 'cause you're certainly no use here!" Tai flinched, but headed to the changing rooms. He showered and dressed quickly, before making his way to Matt's home. He braced himself, then knocked on the door. Mat answered it, looking as if he'd only just woken up. He looked startled to see Tai standing there.  
"Can I come in? I think we need to talk."  
"Sure." said Matt, leaving the door open and walking through into the kitchen. Tai followed, closing the door behind him.  
"Can I get you anything? Coffee, cereal?"  
"Coffee please." Matt gestured for Tai to sit down and went to put the kettle on. While he waited for it to boil he poured a bowl of cereal for himself and began to eat it. Eventually he placed a cup of coffee in front of Tai.  
"Shouldn't you be at training?" he asked, finishing his cereal and sliding into the chair opposite Tai.  
"I left early."  
"To come here?"  
"Yes. Matt, I'm really sorry if I boss you around. I just really wanted you to come to the game."  
"I know. I know you don't mean to boss me around, and I was wrong to yell at you like that."  
"Are things OK then?" asked Tai hopefully.  
"Tai, I don't think you listen to me. I told you exactly why I couldn't make the game, but you wouldn't listen to what I was saying. You always try to make me do what you want, not what I want."  
"But Matt, you never come to my games. I come to all your gigs, even if I should be doing homework or something, but you don't support me at all. Sometimes I feel that your band is more important to you than I am."  
"That's not true! Tai, you and I have been friends, more than friends, for a long time. You're really important to me, but the band is important to me as well, just like football is to you. I do come to your games, it's just been difficult at the moment. I'll try harder to come to your games, but you've got to understand that if I say I can't come, I have a good reason and not think that you can make me change my mind."  
"I'll try. I really will." promised Tai.  
"Then I'll try to come to all of your games." said Matt.   
"So are we OK now?"  
"Yes, I think so. I'll try to come to your games and you'll try to stop telling me what to do."  
"I can agree with that." said Tai. He leaned forward and kissed Matt gently over the table. Matt kissed back eagerly.  
"I've missed you Taichi." he said softly when the kiss ended.  
"I missed you too." Tai admitted. He stood up and pulled Matt into a close embrace, giving him a much deeper and more passionate kiss.  
"Dad won't be back for ages yet" said Matt, an innocent expression on his face, his eyes sparkling with laughter. "You can come into my bedroom if you'd like."  
"You've talked me into it!" said Tai with a laugh. Matt kissed him, and the two went down the hall into Matt's bedroom, closing the door firmly behind them.  
  
Well, there you go! Fairly pointless piece of Taito fluff. Review!  
  
  
  



End file.
